Dear Editor,
As I write this from the ground floor of my residence in Upper Charlotte Street, Bourda, the road outside is covered with a few inches of rain water from the deluge early Sunday morning, May 31, and as a result the yard is flooded and now water has seeped into the house downstairs from outside.
The only thing I wish to say about this is that where I am located about a corner from Vlissengen Road, should be the highest part of the drainage system for old Georgetown, which drains from east to west (by gravity at low tide, pumped at high tide?) into the Demerara River. If I am under water at the high end, then what is happening to those poor folks around the Law Courts and lower Regent Street areas, who inhabit the low end of this drainage system?
This caused me to remember a situation that occurred in the early nineties when a water main broke along Avenue of the Republic on the western side between Croal Street and Charlotte Street, opposite the Law Courts. Many valves were closed by GS&WC, some as far as North Road by the Bank of Guyana, to try to stop the outpouring of water in the city drains along Avenue of the Republic, but although the flow was abated, business places in the America Street area threatened to sue the Water Works for damages.
Workmen from the GS&WC fought with the situation and tried to carry out repairs during the day and into the night. Very early the following morning the water had suddenly drained off into the nearby drainage canal which runs along the roadway in the north to south direction.
It turned out that an outlet culvert at the head of America Street was blocked. This culvert which has an access manhole in the roadway, drained into the main canal a few feet away, and workmen most likely from the city council had cleared this culvert very early the following morning to alleviate the situation.
Now we have a main culvert/koker blocked (and covered up?) in the Muneshwer’s compound as reported by Mr Brian Tiwari. Thank you BK for the recent work that you have been doing in the clearing of the garbage, and thank you Mr Minister of Public Infrastructure for giving us a report on drainage, which pumps are working, which outfalls are blocked up and so on.
I thought that drainage in Georgetown was under the control of the city council, but they have been very silent on the situation.
Many questions come to mind: why was the culvert in the Muneshwer’s compound left unattended? Was this deliberate as there was a shortage of money to carry out the necessary repairs?
What does the City Engineer’s report on the drainage of Georgetown have to say about this and the other problems such as missing batteries for drainage pumps, outfalls not cleared and so on?
When will the Mayor’s weekly broadcast be restarted to tell us of the drainage and other problems?
When will NCN’s Action Line again feature heads of department from GPL, GWI, M&CC and others (GuySuCo?) to answer consumers’ questions?
I had the opportunity to work closely with Mr Gladstone Fawcett (a former Town Clerk) when he was attached to the GWI, and I remember well him saying what trouble he went through as Town Clerk when he attempted to clean the koker outfalls in the Demerara River.
Having assembled equipment for scouring/scraping the outfalls and actually completing one, the whole assembly was stolen from within the M&CC before further work could be done on the rest of the outfalls. (Of course in those days Town Clerks used to be experienced heads of department promoted from within the ranks of the city council.)
Finally a word about the cleaning of the main drainage canals and the interlocutory drains in the city.
On a pre-election walkabout with a former President and other heads from the M&CC, I witnessed drains being cleaned in the Kitty area, in the cross streets running east to west off Alexander Street.
To my surprise as soon as stuff was removed from the main drain, it filled up again, as the feeder drains were so backed up with silt and garbage, the mess just seeped slowly back into the main drain, and filled it up again.
So BK and others working on the drains of Georgetown, I am afraid that you will have to be there for a long time (as Hercules found out with the Augean Stables) and as Mr Tiwari has already identified at the Muneshwer Koker.
Yours faithfully,
David H J Dewar